Carbon net-zero in manufacturing: seven steps in seven years?

• 1 year, 2 months ago (2023-02-20)
• Junior Isles

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By Ron Beck, Senior Director, Solutions Marketing, Aspen Technology

The appetite for carbon capture and clean-tech projects to accelerate progress to net-zero in line with UN targets is substantial.

The UK government has shortlisted 20 carbon capture, usage and storage projects for potential support, while the European Union is investing more than €1.8 billion in a variety of initiatives ranging from battery manufacturing and low-carbon cement production to synthetic sustainable aviation fuel.

The signs may look encouraging, but markets are experiencing significant energy price and supply volatility, which adds to the difficulties of planning for a more sustainable manufacturing industry. How should asset-intensive, high-energy-consuming industries such as aerospace, fertiliser or steel production, navigate towards a low or no-carbon future employing new technologies?

Digitalisation and the use of advanced software will be utterly essential to build into plans for the new technologies that reduce, remove, recycle or sequester carbon. For these reasons, businesses need to effectively capitalise on the enormous growth in volume and complexity of data in energy-intensive industries.

Then they can deploy sophisticated modelling techniques to chart the way forward, making extremely important strategic decisions on the basis of evidence and accurate forecasting. This will achieve the right balance between carbon reduction and profitability. Businesses can also factor in energy security requirements, which have become more pressing in the last 12 months, given the Ukraine war.

Sooner or later all major manufacturing organisations will face the challenges of decarbonising, so it is worth outlining a series of steps enabling them to grasp the full potential of processes for CO2 reduction or capture.

Step one – gain a more detailed view of your emissions

Many businesses lack precision when it comes to knowing what they emit or use. They need a real-time view. They must be able to identify the bad actors emitting or generating significant amounts of CO2. Once an organisation has achieved this, it should use solutions, including digital predictive models, to explore the options for reductions, using insights that support effective real-time decisions.  What is important is that any solution must be auditable to meet the requirements of regulators and investors. Advanced software makes this simple, transparent and credible despite the complexities.

Step two – achieving greater energy-efficiency

Energy-efficiency is the lowest-hanging fruit and closer examination frequently reveals that companies have not executed as well in this area as they thought. Using digitalisation to make energy use more efficient will deliver further gains of up to 20 per cent, both reducing CO2 and increasing margins.

Step three – carbon capture and removal

This is another significant step that can deliver another 20 per cent in reductions. One option is point-source carbon capture and storage (CCS), removing carbon from flue gases. Another is direct air capture (DAC), which takes carbon out of the atmosphere at specialised plants using huge fans and chemistry. This is at lower concentration than carbon capture, but whereas CCS take a company to zero, DAC could, by removing more carbon that a company emits, take it below zero, called by the UN “carbon removal”. Currently, however, carbon capture is expensive, and transport, storing and monitoring the captured carbon (sequestered in former North Sea oil and gas fields, for example) are all challenging. Subsidies and carbon offsets currently make the costs acceptable, but embedding digital technology is likely to lead to economic breakthroughs.

Step four – switching to low carbon feedstocks

Low-carbon inputs are an obvious source of reductions for manufacturing, especially through bio feedstock utilisations. Here is it possible to drive emissions down another 10 per cent in typical chemical and refining settings.

Step five – electrification of process equipment

This step is for organisations running equipment on diesel, natural gas or the conventional power grid. They can then plan to switch to green electricity or geo-thermal energy, potentially delivering another 15 or 20 per cent reductions in e plants that are energy intensive such as a refinery.

Step six – incorporate renewables and switch to microgrids

Organisations need to use renewables such as solar and wind energy from their own sites or from industrial producers. Microgrids have also become a significant feature of green energy. These are small electricity distribution grids where the site is directly managing and optimising its own sources, making best possible use of electricity and ensuring manufacturing continues if public power grids go into brownouts or blackouts.

Step seven – the hydrogen economy

Hydrogen is an exciting prospect as a clean alternative to fossil fuels, but the economics remain challenging. Will organisations be prepared to pay a green premium for it? Europe has moved more slowly on this than several other parts of the world such as the Middle East, India and Australia.

All these steps are achievable, although electrification of very high energy processes such as ethylene cracking or steel production could be more long-term.

Regulatory uncertainty about emissions is also a factor that inhibits investment in new sources of energy along with differences in definitions of bio feedstocks between trading blocs.

We can also see how the UK and Europe are at structural and demographic disadvantages compared with many Asian economies. The retirement of skilled workers in the UK and Europe is a factor, whereas south Asia and the Far East have larger skills bases, agilely form consortiums and feature growing manufacturing capacity.

Regardless of location, all industries will have to shorten innovation cycles. The picture will be different once organisations are more fully digitalised and can for example, run thousands of different ideas through digital twin design technologies, modelling far faster than the months it takes to build a pilot plant.

Subsurface modelling is a good example of how highly advanced technology can transform the viability of sequestering carbon in former oil and gas fields. Digitalisation will transform how manufacturing adapts and incorporates radical new carbon reduction techniques – from conceptualisation to design, implementation and monitoring.

None of these steps can by itself take care of carbon-reduction, but it is certain digitalisation will be essential as manufacturers strive to maintain profit levels as they chart their individual paths towards UN targets for carbon reduction.